Klô Pelgag is one of the most unusual success stories of the past few years in Québécois music.

Pelgag — whose real name is Chloé Pelletier-Gagnon — is a 27-year-old singer-songwriter who makes arty music that mixes classical influences with ’70s-style progressive rock, with a little chanson thrown in for good measure. You can hear everything from Frank Zappa to Harmonium on her two albums, L’Alchimie des monstres from 2013 and last year’s L’Étoile thoracique.

Last week at Le Verre Bouteille on Mont-Royal Ave. E., Pelgag was sipping white wine and admitting she’s a little surprised by how swimmingly everything has gone since the release of her first album. She knows what she does is hardly the most mainstream thing around, and it’s not at all tailor-made for the play-it-safe franco radio networks in Quebec.

But even if it’s not on the hit parade, her music is winning her friends in high and low places. She won four Félix trophies at the ADISQ gala this fall, including for alternative album, singer-songwriter and critic’s choice for album of the year. L’Étoile thoracique also made it onto the long list for the Polaris Music Prize this year, she won the Prix Félix-Leclerc at the FrancoFolies this summer, and she nabbed the Prix Rapsat-Lelièvre at Les Francofolies de Spa in Belgium.

Pelgag figures she has headlined about 100 concerts since L’Étoile thoracique came out in November 2016, and the tour isn’t over yet: she pulls into Club Soda on Friday.

The album has a big, string-laden sound, which was recreated with a full orchestra at the FrancoFolies. On tour Pelgag does these richly complex songs with a pared-down band that includes a three-piece string section, a bassist/guitarist/keyboardist, a drummer and Pelgag herself on piano and guitar.

With these orchestral arrangements, you might think Pelgag has a background in classical music. It turns out that’s not the case at all.

“I didn’t really have a huge amount of musical baggage,” she said. “I never studied music. So I guess that brings in quite a few musical accidents. I listened to a lot of progressive rock when I was a teenager. I loved Gentle Giant. In fact, I really liked music from the ’70s, from Quebec and elsewhere. I’m really fascinated by that period.”

People often come up to her and tell her they figure she has an academic background in music. In fact, she says, she only learned music when she started writing songs at the age of 17 or 18. She had already consumed a lot of prog rock, so that was a big influence.

“Probably that had an impact on how I constructed songs,” said Pelgag. “It probably made me move far away from the standard formula of verse-chorus-verse that we usually find in folky Québécois songs. My songs more jump from one thing to another with different kinds of chord progressions. But it’s unconscious. It’s not like I said I’m going to write songs like that.”

Pelgag is also a big fan of string arrangements, which will come as no surprise if you’ve heard the orchestral backing on the songs on L’Étoile thoracique.

“I love what a string section provokes emotionally,” said Pelgag, adding she doesn’t even listen to a lot of classical music even though she likes it.

Neither is she able to read music, which can be a challenge when she is trying to explain her ideas for arrangements to the classical musicians she works with.

“I learned how to talk to them,” said Pelgag. “When I started working with strings, I learned a lot from these musicians and they learned a lot from me about spontaneity. The fact is that classical musicians aren’t the people the most into improvisation.”

Reaction has been good since the release of her first album, but even Pelgag was taken aback when she snared four trophies at the ADISQ gala a couple of months back.

“It was a nice surprise,” she said. “I think it shows that there’s an openness to something that’s hard to categorize. I really never imagined that my music would reach so many people. That’s what makes me happiest: that this album has reached so many ears.”

Some of those ears are in France. Her music has done well there since the beginning, though it’s not necessarily a big mainstream success there. She figures she has done close to 200 shows in France.

This Week's Flyers

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.